Supreme Court of Pa vacates 6500 juvenile convictions.

by shmuelman

Thu Oct 29, 2009 at 10:04:17 PM PD

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled late Thursday that almost all juvenile delinquency cases heard by former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella from Jan. 1, 2003 to May 31, 2008 must be thrown out.
Ciavarella took millions in kickbacks to incarcerate juvenile offenders in private detention facilities.

This is an excellent link about this story, one of the most egregious abuses of judicial power (outside of appointing Bush President) in the history of the United States.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/...

Ciavarella and Michael Conahan ,who was serving as president judge of the Luzerne County Common Pleas Court, a position that allowed him to control the county-court budget, entered a plea deal that would have them serve 7 year sentences. The federal judge presiding over the case, 83-year-old Edwin M. Kosik, last month rejected the plea agreements Ciavarella and Conahan had signed in exchange for their admissions of guilt.

Read on...

Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

By Robert Barnes

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 29, 2009

It did not take long for the judge to determine that the convicted rapist in front of him was irredeemable.

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

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Witness to an assault: Must you report it?

By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY

Police investigating the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a school dance are finding that a California law may make it impossible to prosecute as many as 20 people who saw the rape and did nothing.

A state statute requires that people must report to police any information they have about the sexual assault of children under the age of 14. There is no law requiring people do the same for victims over that age.

"The fact that our victim missed that age by a very short time …" said Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan. "It's just very offensive that there's no statute we can use to show that we condemn their behavior."

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How Could It Be Against the Law to Spread Public Information?

By Charles Mostoller, AlterNet. Posted October 29, 2009.

An activist shared on Twitter what he heard on his police scanner, and now faces serious federal investigation.

The hazmat team rushed into Elliot Madison's home in Queens, N.Y., and headed straight for the kombucha tea brewing in a corner, assuming that the outspoken anarchist was concocting a chemical weapon.

Now Madison, 41 -- who is under investigation by a federal grand jury for violations of a rarely used anti-riot statute -- has denounced the probe as politically motivated and in violation his constitutional rights.

Madison was arrested on Sept. 24 at a hotel outside Pittsburgh, accused under Pennsylvania law of aiding protesters at the G20 Summit by listening to a police scanner and then sending out Twitter feeds on the location of police, helping protesters to avoid arrest.

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Seems like Obama's Department of Justice is picking up right where George Bush's left off - Tom

Task Force: Signing of Hate Crimes Measure Is Historic

"Laws embody the values of our nation, and through the enactment of this hate crimes law, our country has — once and for all — sent a clear and unequivocal message that it rejects and condemns all forms of hate violence, including crimes motivated by hatred of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people."

— National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey

WASHINGTON - October 28 - President Obama today signed federal hate crimes legislation into law. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act will help protect people against violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity, race, religion, gender, national origin and disability by extending the federal hate crimes statute. It will provide critical federal resources to state and local agencies to equip local officers with the tools they need to prosecute hate crimes. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey will attend the commemorative event later today at the White House.

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"Freakonomics" Authors Tell You How to be a Good Prostitute

Posted by Sady Doyle, Comment Is Free at 2:30 PM on October 26, 2009.

The men behind "Freakonomics" offer a stunningly shallow and flawed view of sex work as a career option for women.

Good news, ladies. You, too, can make millions by charging for sex! And you'll just have a slam-bang, gee-golly splendiferous time doing it, too -- at least if you absolutely adore the sort of men who pay for it. Be warned, however: Disliking those men will consign you to the minimum-wage ranks of sex professionals, forever longing for the big bucks you could be earning, had you only an appropriately chipper attitude.

Such is the advice of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics fame. They are back with a new book, Superfreakonomics, and recently they unveiled a bit of it in the form of an excerpt about how to succeed as a prostitute.

Freakonomics, of course, is the science of choosing an appropriately wacky or controversial subject (sumo wrestlers, abortion), applying a little economic analysis to it and coming up with a shocking conclusion that will make people blog about you. In that respect, the how-to-charge-for-sex piece was a no-brainer. Expressing any opinion about prostitution will bring on outrage (and attention) from one corner or another, no matter what your opinion turns out to be. Of course, if you are aiming for maximum impact, it helps to be -- as Levitt and Dubner are -- really, stunningly, remarkably wrong.

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Teaching The Kids A Lesson

by digby



Following up on my post earlier today about the new "warning label" on the tasers, here's some rather disturbing news on the same subject:

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Board of Juvenile Affairs on Friday moved ahead with plans for legislation and rules to allow the use of pepper spray and Taser devices in secure facilities.

[...]

Rep. Wade Rousselot, D-Okay, said he intends to sponsor legislation that would allow OJA staff to use chemical spray and or Tasers to protect themselves and obtain control of juveniles in a facility.

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Critics, including civil-rights lawyers and human-rights advocates, called the training bulletin an admission by Taser that its guns could cause cardiac arrest. They called it a stunning reversal for the company, which for years has maintained that the gun was incapable of inducing a cardiac arrest. (Image: Metro.co.uk)

And don't forget this story from Taser Inernational. Tom

Spiritual Misguidance

October 21, 2009 6:06 PM

If you're going to find religion while committing an armed robbery, the least you should do is leave the scene without violating any of the Ten Commandments. Otherwise you look like a hypocrite.

Gregory Smith, pictured, entered an Advance America Cash store, pointed a gun at a clerk and soon asked her to pray with him, according to police in Indianapolis, IN who have surveillance video of Smith on bended knee in prayer with the victim (seen at right).

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Judges reject California plan to cut prison crowding

The panel threatens to impose its own plan if the state does not submit an acceptable one within three weeks.

By Michael Rothfeld

October 22, 2009

Crowded conditions at the state prison in Lancaster. A three-judge federal panel has given the Schwarzenegger administration three weeks to come up with an acceptable plan for reducing the California prison population. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times / March 2, 2007)

Reporting from Sacramento - Three federal judges on Wednesday forcefully rejected a Schwarzenegger administration proposal to ease prison overcrowding, threatening to impose their own plan for reducing the inmate population if the state does not submit an acceptable one within three weeks.

The panel said California officials had failed to comply with their order to produce a plan to pare the number of state prisoners by 40,000 within two years. The judges agreed to postpone a decision on a request by inmates' lawyers to hold Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in contempt of court for defying the earlier order, issued Aug. 4.

The state's plan, submitted Sept. 18, also failed to specify how much lower the number of inmates would be after six, 12, 18 and 24 months, as the judges had demanded.

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